I am using an online learning tool based on Drupal and modified by the guys at Good Basic (Will and Jarrod) to teach at UPEI. We are in our 3rd iteration of the design and I am increasingly happy that we will have a tool that will offer professors, students, and learners of all types what they really need. It will be very easy to use, inexpensive and powerful.
But what do I mean by powerful?
I have been very demanding of the folks who are struggling to find the right tool for ePortfolios. I have asked them to keep asking themselves what is it for. So I put myself in the same place for a learning tool. What is it for. Powerful to do what?
This was my answer to the Drupal community.
Hi My name is Rob Paterson and I teach a number of online courses at UPEI. Will Pate and Jarrod Piccioni have been developing a Drupal site for me over the last year. We are now in version 3 Beta - I would ay that we are with 20% of a release value.
I have been teaching online now for more than 4 years and think that I am beginning to get it. Please bear with me but I felt compelled to offer some context in the midst of this conversation about a feature.
I am in my mid 50's and grew up utterly imbued with the teacher/student set up that we all know. The teacher is the sage on the stage and imparts the wisdom to her students. The curriculum is clearly bounded and can be therefore tested. It is the job of the student to learn the stuff in this bounded curriculum and to be able to repeat it back to the teacher. The teacher will then reward this with marks. The rewards are extrinsic and are in the control as is everything of the teacher. Sounds familiar?
Most online tools tray their best to replicate this set of assumptions in the tool. With the greatest respect, knowing that we are all prisoners of the prevailing culture and pedagogy, I know that tools that replicate this approach will fail.
The history of innovation is one of a lag in culture behind the effective deployment of a new tool. A few examples. In 1940, the French had more and better tanks than the Germans. But the French were defeated in weeks. What happened? Why did the French who had the advantage with more and better of the new fail and so badly? Because they used the tank in the context of it being a mobile pillbox or infantry support (the problem of the previous war) while the Germans used a new context of the tank as a strategic assault weapon. Those that used the PC as a small mainframe, missed its true power as a connective tool (Even Bill missed this for a while) Those that saw its role as a connector did best.
The power of online learning is not only the obvious: that it breaks the barriers of time and place. It is that it changes the relationship between all parties. Learning is now derived not from the explicit - what can be written down in a book - but is better derived from the tacit - which is derived from the inner recesses of knowledge (The Gold) This can only happen in conversation and only in a conversation that is safe. The tacit is also intrinsically motivated which means that the learning sticks. How much of what you learned for a test remains? How much of what you learned for your self do you still have? Such a new way demands a very different relationship with the teacher. Tests have little place in a learning community. Imagine that I am a programmer in a Drupal community such as this. Where does a quiz fit? If I don't know something I ask the community for help. Sometimes no one person has the answer but a conversation between a few will extract it.
If you think of the tool only in terms of a set of features embedded in how we have always done this, then Drupal will end up like WebCT. This site is a real learning community. We don't know how to do all this stuff so we are talking about it. We are having a conversation.
The easiest metaphor for the bottom line utility of Drupal for learning that I can think of is eBay. eBay have above all created a SAFE PLACE where people can trade directly. Think how different this is from a store! This is the scale of the cultural gulf that we have to consider. The learning tool that will take over the world will be one that whose utility creates a safe conversation between a group of learners facilitated by the prof/facilitator whatever.
This safe place can be bounded by a course with a set of learning limits (I would be happy to show you what Will and I are up to at UPEI) and also will be unbounded places where people with a common problem such as diabetes will learn from each other how best to mediate their symptoms, their treatment and their health. It will be a place where oncologists keep current and help each other.
Some have said that a conversation will not work with a set and known area such as a book or math. I disagree. If the book is say Tale of Two Cities there is no better way of understanding and getting to love the book than by sharing experiences of reading it. All math problems were new and mysterious to those that first solved them. They are presented today as givens. Well they are not and if they have a context and conversation then they become as mysterious and wonderful as they really are.
Underneath all of this is a new approach to design. We have been gripped by the machine model. All design is to a tangible goal. In nature all design is about how supporting processes interact and produce a dynamic called life. The old learning works to a goal called a mark or a credential. The new opens the student to her own mind. to a community who stimulates her and in the end to the realization that learning is not something separate from the other activities in her life but is central to her existence.
Sorry this is a lecture and an interruption. I make it because I am finding Drupal close to being the type of life giving tool that I know will be the winner. I make it because I feel in the community, a need for such a tool and the energy to move forward very quickly.
So we are, as always, at choice. We can stay with the old way of seeing the world or we can see the potential of Drupal to change it
